Denise Bentley had been a City forex dealer and management consultant when at the age of 40, she suffered a brain haemorrhage and her 10-year-old daughter found her passed out on the kitchen floor.

It was a trauma of terrifying symmetry because at the age of ten, Denise had lost her 40-year-old mother, a seamstress, also to a brain haemorrhage.

In this case, due to the brilliance of her doctors, Mrs Bentley survived, but she was far from back to normal.

“I was told that 90 per cent of people in my situation die before they get to hospital and that I was lucky to be alive,” she said.

“But I struggled to feel lucky. I was paralysed down my right side, I had double vision, I couldn’t stand up. I became depressed, thinking: why did I live?”

Mrs Bentley, 48, would go on to make a full recovery and with her clean bill of health came a fresh outlook on life.

“I decided to try and live less selfishly and help others, so I went to volunteer at [homeless charity] Crisis, but what I witnessed there devastated me. I saw homeless people caught up in a cycle of despair who seemed utterly defeated. I decided I wanted to give dignity and a voice to people who didn’t have one.” She went on to found a charity called the First Love Foundation and then five years ago, backed by the Trussell Trust, she started the Tower Hamlets Foodbank.

Located in the shadow of Canary Wharf, demand for its services has soared ten-fold to 200 new referrals a month, 40 per cent of them children.

Tower Hamlets Foodbank is one of more than 200 charities that the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund has backed in the past three years, thanks to cash injections totalling £3 million from Comic and Sport Relief.

This year, once again the Evening Standard has joined forces with Comic Relief and this time we are asking our readers to “make your hair funny for money” for Red Nose Day and get sponsored. Because without the generosity of Londoners, transformative groups like Tower Hamlets Foodbank could not function.

Mrs Bentley gave the Standard a tour of her spotlessly clean warehouse. All around, packed neatly into crates, and arranged in order of clearly marked expiry dates, were hundreds of boxes of cereal, rice cakes, biscuits, marmalade, toilet rolls, sanitary towels and tins of tuna, baked beans and plum tomatoes.

Last year they collected 12,428 kg of food to become one of the largest food banks in London, a shocking barometer of hidden hunger in a borough where the average Canary Wharf salary is £95,000 and yet which suffers the highest child poverty rate (50 per cent) in London.

“Canary Wharf might be just across the road but for people who use our food bank it’s like a million miles away,” said Mrs Bentley.

“People arrive here having walked with their children. Some come just with a coat, no shirt, and holes in their shoes.

“We see parents who have gone hungry because there’s not enough food for them and their children.

“We see people you wouldn’t imagine who have fallen on hard times. It’s real destitution. When we give them food they tend to burst into tears.” One such arrival last year was Rubina, 41, a Masters graduate in social sciences and the daughter of a lawyer who never imagined that she would find herself destitute and unable to feed her four-year-old son.

Yet when her relationship broke down amid domestic violence, and she fled with her son to a women’s refuge in east London, it was staff at Tower Hamlets Foodbank who turned her life around.

“I had no income and I was told that although I might be entitled to benefits, it would be months before they kicked in,” said Rubina.

“The refuge required that I pay a small rent, but I ran out of money and I was terrified that I would be asked to leave and end up hungry and homeless on the street with my son.”

A refuge key-worker referred her to the Tower Hamlets Foodbank, where Mrs Bentley gave her a food package that would last a week and sat her down to explore why she had wound up on skid row — and how to get off it.

“The biggest reason people wind up at our food bank is benefit delay or a change in benefits,” said Mrs Bentley.

Food parcel recipients — who have to be referred by GPs, social workers or other welfare agencies — can only use the food bank up to three times.

The model at Tower Hamlets Foodbank, known as “food bank plus”, provides benefits advice, the goal being to avoid creating dependency.

“We give out two tons of food a month,” she said. “The food is all donated, much of it by people working in Canary Wharf. Shoppers at the local Tesco or Asda can ask for a portion of their weekly shop to come to us, or make out a standing order.”

Indeed, it is because she once worked in the City that she feels she understands the mentality of offering a hand up rather than a hand out.

But Mrs Bentley attributes her passionate social entrepreneurial spirit to her father, a labourer, who brought her up in Willesden after the tragedy of her mother’s death. “Dad worked at a factory making baths and after mum died we really struggled financially,” she said.

“But my biggest memory of that time is my dad’s generosity. He grew potatoes and spinach in our garden and he gave it to locals who were struggling, even though we were too.”

“You could say,” she laughed, “that he ran a food bank!”

She estimates that her Tower Hamlets Foodbank has helped more than 5,000 people to get back on their feet in the past five years.

Rubina is one of them. “They got me the benefits I was due and helped me get my confidence up,” she said. “I was fobbed off by benefits people, but when the experts at Tower Hamlets Foodbank got on the phone to them, they acted fast.

“Now my son is in school, I have a new place to live and I am volunteering as a receptionist at a community centre and applying for jobs.” She smiled as her eyes welled up. “Because of this wonderful woman, I feel positive again and have a future to look forward to.”

What they do: Founded by Denise Bentley, they provide food packages and benefits advice for people in crisis referred by other agencies.

Grants by Dispossessed Fund: £20,000 (two of £10,000 each)

How grant was used: To help fund salaries of five full time staff, including Mrs Bentley. They provide advice and a direct link to other services to support clients in whatever issue they face behind their food poverty.